For one horrible, shameful moment, I seriously contemplated doing what Rose would probably term “a runner”. But to leave Sean like this—with the unpaid bill, to add insult to injury, or was it the other way round?—would be unconscionably rude.
Also, his motorbike was parked in my entrada. There really was no escape.
I walked back into the wine bar, the speed of my steps inversely proportional to the closeness of our table. “Sorry,” I said as I slid back onto the bench seat, the uncaring ground having utterly failed to open up and swallow me en route. “Phone call.”
Sean stared at me, stony-faced. The waitress had replenished our drinks while I’d been away from the table, but he didn’t appear to have touched his. “Yeah. I saw. And heard. Come to that, so did the rest of the village. Although you might want to Facebook it when you get home. There’s probably one or two people in the next town who didn’t quite get just how much you don’t want to go out with me.”
I cringed. “It’s nothing personal…”
“Yeah, I get it. It’s just that I’m from a different world, isn’t that what you said?”
“That wasn’t—I wasn’t talking about you!”
“So who were you talking about, then?” Sean picked up his beer glass, frowned at it and put it down again.
“Um. Bugs Bunny?” I cringed. It sounded so totally implausible, now I came to say it out loud.
“Yeah, right.” He got out his wallet, pulled out a couple of notes and slipped them neatly under his beer mat. “You enjoy the rest of your wine. I think I can remember the way back to my bike.” Then he stood.
“It’s not…” I started. But it was, wasn’t it? At least, even if he’d mistaken my motives, the end result was the same. I didn’t want to go out with him, did I?
So I should let him go.
“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it.
It only seemed to make him feel worse, if the hurt that flashed across his expression was any indication. “Yeah. Me too. I’ll see you around.”
And then he was gone.
“Robert, you do realise you’re a total, utter lady-garden?”
I cringed. “I wish you’d stop using that phrase.” I was beginning to question the wisdom of having hared up the hill to Rose’s little flat following my ignominious departure from Badger’s. Mr. Shiraz was no longer in residence, and Mr. Merlot was only half the man he used to be. Granted, I’d had some hand in reducing his circumstances. I hadn’t been able to stomach my sauvignon blanc after Sean’s departure.
Much as he hadn’t been able to stomach his beer in my presence.
“When—’scuse me,” Rose said, having interrupted herself with a burp. “When did I ever tell you I wanted you to set me up with Sean?”
“You told me to ask him out,” I protested. “And you were the one flirting with him in the Chinese takeaway.”
“Yeah, because if I’d waited for you to get your act together, we’d both have ended up dying alone.”
“You might have asked me if I wanted to get my act together!” I took a fortifying swallow of Tesco’s cut-price merlot. Hopefully the high alcohol content would numb my taste buds sometime soon.
“Well, why don’t you, then? You’re not telling me you don’t fancy the pants off him.”
“I…well…” A further mouthful of merlot aided the brain power. “If you don’t want him yourself, why are you so keen for me to get together with him?”
“Because you want to. Don’t you? And he’d be good for you. Chip a few corners off that ivory tower you grew up in.” She lolled back on the sofa, her fuzzy pink dressing gown parting to show a sticking plaster high on one leg where I presumed she’d cut herself shaving. I reached over and adjusted the fluffy material to a more respectable position.
Rose rolled her eyes in exaggerated fashion. “Worried you’re going to get a glimpse of my la—”
“Don’t say it.”
“Prude. I am wearing knickers, you know. My mum taught me always to wear undies when entertaining gentleman callers. You know, ’cos they like taking ’em off themselves.” She sniggered. I ignored her.
“So you knew about his profession, then?”
“The pest control?” She smirked. “Might have. Did you do a spit-take when he told you?”
“I did not.”
“Bet you did really. Did they have to get out the smelling salts?”
“Rat-catching is an ancient and honourable profession,” I said stiffly. “I don’t think you should be making jokes about it.”
“See? I told you, you fancy him. So what’s all this about not wanting to go out with him?”
I sighed. “I just don’t want to get into a relationship right now. Not with anyone.”
“Hang on, I thought I was the brokenhearted man-hater, here. All my hopes and dreams shat on by that bastard. What’s your excuse?”
I stared into my glass. The wine being somewhat murky, I didn’t find much in the way of inspiration there. “Apparently there’s something of an epidemic.”
“What, are you serious? Why didn’t you say anything before?”
“About Crispin? Not really my favourite topic of conversation.”
“So go on, tell me about him.” She leaned forward, and her dressing gown gaped at the top this time.
I shielded my gaze politely from the expanse of pale cleavage and purple lingerie that was revealed, and got another eye-roll for my trouble. Huffing, Rose made a show of adjusting her dressing gown.
“There’s nothing much to tell.” Lies, all lies, but I couldn’t face her knowing the truth and despising me. “He was a fellow teacher at my last school, and we were together. I, well, I loved him.” It still hurt to say the words, as if I were ripping off a plaster from the half-healed wound in my chest. “And I thought he genuinely cared for me too. But I was wrong.” That, at least, was the truth.
“Is that why you left your last job?”
She didn’t know anything, I reminded myself. It was a perfectly reasonable supposition to make. “It’s…related to it,” I said and drank some more merlot. Worryingly, it was starting to taste almost nice.
“Poor you. Don’t s’pose I’d have wanted to stick around somewhere I’d keep bumping into Shitface. Hah. No chance of that, with him buggering off to Dubai.”
I leaned forward, gazing at her with focus. “Is that why you split up? Because you didn’t want to go out there?”
“Not exactly. More to do with him just deciding he was going because that was what he wanted to do, and sod what I thought about it and whether or not I fancied tagging along as the dutiful little wifey, smothering myself in a burqa and giving up alcohol.”
I frowned. “Would you really have had to wear a burqa?”
“That’s not the point, is it? The point is, him just deciding he was taking this job and me having no say whatso-bloody-ever.” She hiccupped. “So I told him he had to choose. Dubai, or me. Bastard. Pass the bottle.”
“Are you sure you haven’t had enough?”
“I’m positive I haven’t had enough. And I’m double positive you haven’t had enough.” She cocked her head on one side. “Does a double positive make a negative? One of the kids is bound to ask me one day.”
“You’re a credit to the state education system,” I told her gravely as I refilled her glass.
“That’s a no, isn’t it? Gawd, it’s true, isn’t it? Those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.” She stared morosely into her glass.
“I’m taking that away if you’re going to get all maudlin.”
She handed it to me anyway and lurched to her feet. “I think I’ve had enough. Gotta pee. Sorry, tinkle. Heh. Gotta tinkle, twinkle.” I watched in concern as she swayed across the room, nearly tripping over her handbag at one point, but with two full glasses of wine in my hands, the logistics of leaping to her aid were eluding me.
It may also, it has to be said, have had something to do with the amount of alcohol currently coursing merrily through my veins. I put the glasses down carefully on the table and leaned back on the sofa to await Rose’s return.
Five hours later, I woke up frozen and alone. Worried she might have passed out in the bathroom, I took my aching head and queasy stomach to investigate.
Rose was curled up in bed, sleeping like a baby and snoring like a foghorn. Miffed, I stole the throw from the bottom of the bed and went back to sleep on the sofa.